1. Technical Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to telecommunications systems, and in particular, to a method and apparatus for providing enhanced telecommunications services to a subscriber.
2. Description of Related Art
Historically, the public telephone network (PTN) has included large, monopolistic entities that control connectivity and transport at the local exchange (LE) level (local loop). The resulting technologies created by these entities, sometime decades old, has left an expensive, proprietary, non-integrating network that is incapable of handling the rapidly changing marketplace.
The deregulation of the local phone monopolies in 1996 has begun to spawn an emerging competitive market that requires new technological advancements in order to leverage new enhanced services, while still providing cost effectiveness. There are two different business models evident amongst the new local telephone carriers—low cost producer or differentiator. These business models are creating market drivers for less costly, more scalable programmable switching platforms that are also built to allow seamless integration of peripheral components for profitable, differentiating services.
Such enhanced services include single number access services, unified messaging, recording, specialized call routing and specialized call terminating treatment. All of these enhanced services have been created with today's telephone in mind, which uses a simplistic touch-tone dial pad user-interface. Trying to implement these enhanced services with the touch-tone dial pad has led to more complicated service codes, access codes and scheduling requirements, which has further led to a lack of interest in these services by many subscribers. In addition, the architecture of today's enhanced service platforms does not allow for seamless integration with the proprietary PTN, causing many new local telephone carriers to avoid offering these enhanced services to subscribers.
For example, referring to FIG. 1, there is illustrated a traditional enhanced service platform 100 capable of providing enhanced telecommunications services to subscribers 150. The service platform 100 is operated by a service provider and connected to the public telephone network (PTN) 102, such as the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) or Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN). The traditional service platform 100 is shown positioned outside of the PTN 102 due to the lack of flexibility in services traditionally provided by the PTN 102, as described above.
By positioning the traditional service platform 100 outside the PTN 102, the subscriber 150 is forced to call through the PTN 102 to reach the service platform 100 and then call back through the PTN 102 in order to connect with a called party. For example, traditionally, in order to use one of the enhanced telecommunications services provided by the service platform 100, a subscriber 150 must dial a service code to connect to the service platform 100 through the PTN 102 in order to retrieve the desired service, and then dial a called party number to connect with a called party again through the PTN 102 using the desired service.
This type of call procedure and call routing does not allow a service provider to provide transparent enhanced telecommunications services to a subscriber 150. Transparent communication services enable the subscriber 150, for example, to simply pick up a phone and call a person without forcing the subscriber 150 to perform an intermediate step (e.g. first calling the service platform 100 before calling the person). Moreover, since the subscriber 150 generally uses the touch-tone dial pad on their phone to dial the specific service code (e.g. *xx) associated with the service that the subscriber 150 wants to use, requiring the subscriber 150 to use such a touch-tone dial pad presents problems for the subscriber 150 who wants to utilize a hands free unit or otherwise be hands-free. Likewise, the use of a touch-tone dial pad limits the ability of the subscriber 150 to be hands-free when receiving incoming calls during a call.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide transparent enhanced telecommunications services to subscribers.
It is a further object of the present invention to implement an enhanced service platform within the public telephone network.
It is still a further object of the present invention to provide a new telephone interface within the enhanced service platform that is voice-activated.
It is still a further object of the present invention to provide a web-activated interface within the enhanced service platform.